KINGSTON – With a young, but talented, lineup, Pittston Area coach Vito Quaglia expected his team to be better at the start of the postseason than it was when the regular season began.
The Lady Patriots were the last seed in the seven-team District 2-11 Class 5A subregional softball tournament, but Tuesday night Pittston Area will play for first place.
Two straight road wins over higher-seeded opponents – 6-1 at second-seeded Wallenpaupack Tuesday and 6-4 at Wyoming Valley West Friday – put Pittston Area in a championship game against Abington Heights for the second straight year.
“We believed in the kids all year,” Quaglia said. “Not that I’m Nostradamus, but I told our kids we could be playing for the district title with the worst record.
“Knowing the kinds of teams we play all year, your Hazletons, Nanticoke, Tunkhannock, Wyoming Area, Valley West. Valley West is a very good team; they beat us twice. I knew we were battle-tested just from our conference play.”
The Lady Patriots were the sixth seed a year ago when they went to the District 2 Class 3A final by beating third- and second-seeded teams in the quarterfinals and semifinals. Counting a 2015 win over Abington Heights in the opening round, Pittston Area has five postseason road wins over higher-seeded teams in the past three seasons.
The latest wins put Pittston Area in position where it can claim a subregional title, if it can get past Lackawanna League Division 1 champion Abington Heights in Tuesday’s 7 p.m. game at Scranton High School. The Lady Patriots already beat the Lackawanna Division 2 champions with the victory over Wallenpaupack.
Although the “upsets” are something that Pittston Area has produced before, they mainly came from a new cast of characters this time.
Of the nine starters in Friday’s semifinal win, seven are freshmen and sophomores.
Pittston Area combined four straight RBI singles in the first inning with four innings of scoreless relief pitching by Alexa McHugh to lead all the way through Friday’s semifinal.
McHugh took over in the circle in the middle of the fourth with all of the game’s scoring already complete. She issued a walk and allowed her only hit on the first two batters. McHugh then took advantage of strong defense behind her to retire the next eight batters and 12 of the last 14 batters even though she only struck out one.
“I know that my defense will help me as long as the batters put the ball in play where they can field it and make a good play, I know that I can always rely on them,” McHugh said.
McHugh also went 2-for-4 with a double. She scored in the four-run top of the first when Morgan Mesaris, Madisyn Antal, Shayla Williams and Kaehler Kivler strung together consecutive run-scoring singles with two outs.
“It was just motivation,” McHugh said. “We lost to them twice, but we came back and beat them on their home turf.”
The Lady Patriots did so by bunching their hits.
After Wyoming Valley West closed to within 4-3, Pittston Area added two runs with three straight hits to start the third inning.
Mesaris doubled to drive in Nina Cencetti, then scored on a single by Antal.
“We’re working more as a team,” McHugh said, “and we’re stringing hits together at the right times.”
Mesaris, another sophomore, led the offense by going 2-for-3 with a double, two runs and two RBI. She pushed her team-leading batting average close to .500.
Antal, the team leader in RBI, went 2-for-3 and also drove in two runs.
McHugh was the winning pitcher against Wallenpaupack Tuesday when Mesaris had another big day at the plate.
After Cencetti held the Lady Buckhorns to one run through three innings, McHugh threw four scoreless innings, giving up just two hits and a walk while striking out one.
Mesaris went 3-for-3 with a double and two runs scored while Williams and Taryn Ashby provided the run production.
Ashby singled, stole second and scored the game’s first run on McHugh’s two-out RBI single in the third inning.
After Wallenpaupack tied the game in the bottom of the inning, Pittston Area went ahead to stay in the fourth. Mesaris singled and Williams hit a two-run homer.
Mesaris led off the sixth with a double and scored on a two-out single by Ashby.
Williams drove in her third run and Ashby her second in the seventh inning.
